Currently, newspapers, magazines, and other publishers of timely textual and visual content are increasingly competing with online websites for the public's attention. Online websites that generate content (so-called “content sites”) often employ writers or “bloggers” to generate articles, podcasts, videos, and other content regarding topics that are popular at that moment. These content sites face challenges in generating the quantity and diversity of content that is desired by the public and necessary to obtain sufficient web traffic and associated advertising revenue.
Some types of online content can have a low “shelf-life,” in that it can be rendered out-of-date by current events or new conventional wisdom. Online content also faces tremendous levels of competition. While traditional media only competed against a finite number of peer publications and broadcasts, new online media faces competition from thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of websites. As a result, it is important for providers of online content to generate very large volumes of content. It can be useful to continuously generate large amounts of content about a topic to ensure that it is timely and up-to-date, as well to ensure that such content is distributed and displayed throughout the Internet, where it is likely to be consumed by online users.
In addition to the interest of generating large quantities of content, in many cases it is important for online content providers to focus on high-quality content. The above-referenced excess of competition means that online users can easily turn elsewhere if they perceive that online content is low in quality. The quality of content is also important because of the way that users find and browse content online. Many search engines deliver web pages to users based on the level of positive feedback exemplified by linking from other websites, positive comments, thumbs-ups, etc. Therefore, favorably-received content will be higher-ranked by search engines, and more likely to be displayed to users.
The need for large quantities of high-quality content is not easily satisfied by a traditional staff of editors and writers. The amount of online data received on user preferences/history, page performance, reviews, etc. is just too overwhelming for any group of people to efficiently process and leverage. The amount of content that should be generated based on high-demand topics is also too large for the limited staff of a company to create in a high-quality manner. Furthermore, even the most experienced editors are not always able to determine what online content will become most highly-sought-after, and calculate the monetary value of such online content.
The present disclosure is directed to addressing one or more of the above-referenced challenges by providing improved systems and methods for analyzing query relationships and managing electronic content. Among other features and advantages, the disclosed embodiments include determining topics in high demand by, among other things, generating click graphs and performing temporal clustering of search queries. The disclosed embodiments may be used to, for example, calculate the interest or value of electronic content, and request electronic content from users, such as over the Internet.